System and Method for Multimedia Authoring and Playback

1. An authoring system comprising: presentation data including at least one container object containing at least two media objects containing media data, the media data including at least one of text data or picture data; hierarchical structuring of the presentation data by nesting container objects within container objects to form a hierarchical object space; a playback display for playing back the presentation data by presenting the media data in the playback display, the playback display being associated with a master container object that contains the set of playing objects whose media data is displayed in the playback display; a destination container object which is directly contained within the master container object, and which is associated with a nested sub-display shown within the playback display, and which contains at least two media objects which are playing and whose media data is displayed within the sub-display; and user-initiated navigation through the hierarchical object space comprising a preemption of playback for die playing objects contained in the master container object which are not contained within the destination container object, and further comprising a transition whereby the nested sub-display is no longer displayed in the playback display and the media data previously displayed in the nested sub-display becomes displayed in the playback display overall.

2. An authoring system as recited in claim 1 , wherein the user initiates navigation by using a pointing device to select in the playback display the sub-display associated with the destination container object.

3. An authoring system as recited in claim 1 , wherein a system user using a pointing device can manipulate the sub-display in the playback display to adjust display settings for it which include at least one of size, position, cropping and stretch.

4. An authoring system as recited in claim 1 , wherein the transition includes a zooming effect whereby the sub-display grows over time until it fills the playback display.

5. An authoring system as recited in claim 1 , wherein the destination container object further contains a nested container object associated with a nested sub-display embedded within the nested sub-display of the destination container object, and wherein the nested container object contains at least two media objects which are playing and whose media data is displayed within its associated sub-display, comprising a sub-display within a sub-display.

6. An authoring system as recited in claim 1 , wherein the destination container object is a container pointer object which is a container object that references a base container object for its contained objects.

7. An authoring system as recited in claim 6 , wherein the container pointer object references its base container object over a network using a network address.